"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers arc in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

— Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
1995

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

— H.L. Mencken
On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

"Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened."-- Winston Churchill"Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices" Voltaire

"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers arc in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

— Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
1995

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

— H.L. Mencken
On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

Seriously, how do you think the man who compared the C.I.A. to Nazis will react when the Bureau of Labor Statistics first reports a significant uptick in unemployment or decline in manufacturing jobs? What’s he going to do when the Centers for Disease Control and the Census Bureau report spiking numbers of uninsured Americans?

A popular Russian tabloid hit President Trump Friday for "contradictory" statements on NATO, signaling somewhat of a change in tone on the president who has mostly received positive coverage in Russia, the BBC reported.
"(During the election campaign) Trump had called the Alliance obsolete and useless. Less than two months have passed since he moved into the Oval Office and he's already expressed full support for NATO," the tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda wrote.

As the saying goes, you need to be drunk to understand the true position of America's president."

The article comes a day after reports that Moscow is instructing Russian state media to reduce their favorable coverage of President Trump.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Rev Martin Luther King Jr.

Obamacare took my guns away and put me in a FEMA reeducation camp.

Anonymous

If you've got public schools paid for by taxpayers, you're in a socialist nation. If you have public roads paid for by taxpayers, socialist nation. If you've got public defense (police, fire, military, coast guard) paid for by tax dollars, socialist nation. If you're in a nation that has nationalized or localized delivery of services that are not paid for by users alone, you're in a socialist nation- the only question is how socialist. As I see it, we have the military pay to protecting the shipping lanes for our fuel needs which makes up very socialist. In a capitalist nation, the people supplying the oil would pay for their own defense force.

--- On September 17, 1787, as Benjamin Franklin was leaving the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention, at Independence Hall, in Philadelphia, a woman called out to him, saying, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?”“A republic,” Franklin said, “if you can keep it.”

--- LFC, on Gorsuch ruling: "Awesome. A Christianist who swore an oath to uphold the laws of the nation and bore false witness when he did it"

On the opposite side of fake news, the Massive Media Conspiracy has once again managed to keep the American public from hearing about Friday night's massacre that left the streets of Stockholm running with blood.

The way a lot of catastrophes happen is that X doesn't occur because there are safeguards in place, therefore people assume X isn't a worry and they remove the safeguards. Then X happens.
— Nate Silver
"Robots aren't the problem. Capitalism is." -- Last words of Stephen Hawking.
These days, "libertarian" is just a euphemism for a Nazi who's afraid to commit.
"If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention." -- Heather Heyer
"I'd rather have my child, but by golly, if I gotta give her up, we're gonna make it count." -- Her mother
"Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us. You will rule or ruin in all events." -- some RINO

But the Texas cattle rancher now faces a new threat: the Trump administration's blundering, blustering trade policy. By threatening a trade war with Mexico within days of inauguration, the president helped trigger a slide in cattle futures. Mexico is a major export market. By sinking the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the new administration cut off long-sought access to the Japanese market. Now banks have raised the conditions for collateral for loans for ranchers.
Texas ranchers, though, will not be alone for long. Beef producers from Nebraska to the Dakotas face the same problems. So do grain farmers in Kansas and the snow-covered corn fields of Iowa, just like tomato farmers in California and Florida and autoworkers in Michigan, longshoremen, truckers and railway workers in Miami and Houston and Long Beach. These will be the first casualties of a trade war.

The business world sounds like they're already getting fearful of the coming uncertainty. I like the line about how Trump's "policies" (my air quotes) are "logically incoherent" (actual quotes) when put together. The man idiot man-child has no plans ... for anything. He's pure reaction. And anybody he might bring into his administration that shows competence is likely to get cut off at the knees by some random temper tantrum.

The last paragraph is, however, more than just a little schadenfreude inducing. Hey, guys. You supported him so f*** you. Ditto for every wingnut looking at losing their job in a trade war or their health insurance. Or the elderly looking at a tougher set of remaining years due to cuts in Medicare and/or Social Security. You voted for all of it and you deserve every scrap of it. Unfortunately your moronic choice is going to take a lot of innocent people down too.

Quote

Now, even the investor class is starting to feel the headwinds of economic war. Despite a rally at the stock market, the president's policies are now proving logically incoherent when they're put together. The border wall was to be budget-neutral, meaning no new taxes or spending, but now it turns out to cost an estimated $20 billion, which the Mexicans will, in fact, not pay. That means increasing deficit spending or raising taxes, both of which seem non-starters.

A wall and a spending spree on infrastructure will not, it turns out, be free because debt-to-productivity ratios are climbing. Banks are tightening lending conditions, anticipating a profitable credit crunch. Fitch Ratings has warned that the president's erratic foreign and trade policy is causing so much uncertainty that even foreign government debt is starting to look shaky.

"The Trump administration represents a risk to international economic conditions and global sovereign credit fundamentals," according to Fitch. "U.S. policy predictability has diminished, with established international communication channels and relationship norms being set aside and raising the prospect of sudden, unanticipated changes in U.S. policies with potential global implications."

The irony, of course, is that states like Texas, the plains states and Michigan all helped put Trump in office. But the cows in pasture don't care about politics. And cowboys rightly don't care about irony, even if they are to be its first casualties.

" 'Individual conscience' means that women only get contraceptives if their employers, their physicians, their pharmacists, their husbands and/or fathers, pastors, and possibly their mayors, Governors, State Secretaries of Health, Congressmen, Senators, and President all agree that in that particular case they're justifiable." --D.C. Sessions

"That's the problem with being implacable foes - no one has any incentive to treat you as anything more than an obstacle to be overcome."

"The 'Road to Serfdom' is really all right turns." --Progressive Whisperer

""The GOP ... where every accusation is also a confession." --Progressive Whisperer

A petition has been delivered to Berne (Swiss Capital Just in case Sec DeVos doesn't know) to declare Trump a persona non grata ***

*** A diplomatic way to say we don't want you here.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Rev Martin Luther King Jr.

Obamacare took my guns away and put me in a FEMA reeducation camp.

Anonymous

If you've got public schools paid for by taxpayers, you're in a socialist nation. If you have public roads paid for by taxpayers, socialist nation. If you've got public defense (police, fire, military, coast guard) paid for by tax dollars, socialist nation. If you're in a nation that has nationalized or localized delivery of services that are not paid for by users alone, you're in a socialist nation- the only question is how socialist. As I see it, we have the military pay to protecting the shipping lanes for our fuel needs which makes up very socialist. In a capitalist nation, the people supplying the oil would pay for their own defense force.

The business world sounds like they're already getting fearful of the coming uncertainty. I like the line about how Trump's "policies" (my air quotes) are "logically incoherent" (actual quotes) when put together. The man idiot man-child has no plans ... for anything. He's pure reaction. And anybody he might bring into his administration that shows competence is likely to get cut off at the knees by some random temper tantrum.

The last paragraph is, however, more than just a little schadenfreude inducing. Hey, guys. You supported him so f*** you. Ditto for every wingnut looking at losing their job in a trade war or their health insurance. Or the elderly looking at a tougher set of remaining years due to cuts in Medicare and/or Social Security. You voted for all of it and you deserve every scrap of it. Unfortunately your moronic choice is going to take a lot of innocent people down too.

IIRC, one of the so-called conventional wisdoms regarding The Financial Set once the nominees were pretty well set was that since "the markets prefer stability" they would (grudgingly) support the Known Quantity of Hillary Clinton over the Unknown (Comic?) Trump.
Now, how much of what was put out there was pure horse manure and the Financial Set was really behind the current 45 all the way is open to question.

Politics these days is show business. Elections are Dancing with the Stars with consequences. ~Rue Bella

(About fame) Living for likes, shares and follows is a form of validation. The question is whether it is also the source of our self esteem. If it is, we’re screwed. And, culturally, it seems as if it’s become more and more our shared value. ... Meringue is no longer a sweet and pretty topping but the body itself. ~Charles Perez

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson to Charles Yancey, 1816. ME 14:384, via LFC, 12/1/2016

Competent people go in one of a few directions. But incompetence is infinite. ~David Brooks, NY Times

Donald Trump has failed to nominate candidates to a number of key positions, falling significantly behind the Obama administration and troubling the President's claim the White House is running like a "well-oiled machine".

By March 2009, Barack Obama had made nominations to one in six positions requiring Senate confirmation. With 10 days to go until an exact comparison can be made, the Trump team has made nominations to just one post in 16.

As many as 1,200 roles require Senate approval, including Cabinet secretaries, agency chiefs and ambassadors. The Washington Post has compiled a database tracking these appointments, exposing a worrying lag in comparison to previous Presidents.

Just 14 of the positions, or 2.5 per cent, had been confirmed by the Senate at the time of writing. A further 20 are awaiting confirmation, while the remaining 515 (or 94 per cent) are yet to have any nominees put forward by the Trump administration.

I suspect that a good portion of his base thinks this is a good thing. Based on who he has appointed thus far, maybe they are correct.

"Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers arc in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.”

— Carl Sagan
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark
1995

“As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

— H.L. Mencken
On Politics: A Carnival of Buncombe

“The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”